Lost German East

Beschreibung

Beschreibung

After 1945, Germany was inundated with ethnic German refugees expelled from Eastern Europe. Andrew Demshuk explores why they integrated into West German society.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1. From colonization to expulsion: a history of the Germans in Silesia; 2. The quest for the borders of 1937: expellee leaders and the 'right to the homeland'; 3. Homesick in the Heimat: Germans in postwar Silesia and the desire for expulsion; 4. Residing in memory: private confrontation with loss; 5. Heimat gatherings: recreating the lost East in West Germany; 6. Travel to the land of memory: homesick tourists in Polish Silesia; 7. 1970 and the expellee contribution to Ostpolitik; Epilogue: 8. The forgotten East.

Portrait

Andrew Demshuk is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Alabama, Birmingham.

Pressestimmen

'The millions of Silesians who fled their homes in the closing months of the Second World War or who were expelled in its aftermath have most often been remembered - if they have been remembered at all in the English-speaking world - as caricatures: symbols of either German victimization or German revanchism. Andrew Demshuk's book is among the first scholarly works to move beyond the statements of official expellee spokesmen and to explore, sympathetically but critically, the complicated processes through which flesh-and-blood individuals gradually came to terms with the loss of the former homeland. His nuanced analysis of this history is an important contribution not only to understanding West German politics and German-Polish relations in the Cold War era, but also to the comparative study of forced migration and its aftermath.' Jim Bjork, King's College London 'Through a careful and perceptive consideration of an impressive amount of evidence, Andrew Demshuk fundamentally reorients the study of the German expellees away from a preoccupation with leaders and movements to a deeper examination of how the expellees themselves understood their experience. Thanks to a focus on memory and not politics, Demshuk demonstrates that the expellees were not a dwindling band of inveterate revanchists, but rather a large and diverse community committed to preserving common images of their past. Persuasively argued and elegantly written, The Lost German East does more than force us to rethink the Silesian German experience; it offers a template for understanding how refugees throughout the world have and can come to terms with their losses.' Benjamin Frommer, Northwestern University